#120 Run an arbitrary number of engines

[Bahman Movaqar]

Currently, you can only run up to 3 engines in Scid: one "analysis" engine and engines 1 and 2.

Since my laptop has an i7 CPU (8 cores), many times I find myself wishing to analyse more than 3 games over night. For example:

• A vs B using Stockfish with 2 cores
• C vs D using Stockfish with 2 core
• E vs F using Stockfish with 1 core
• G vs H using Stockfish with 1 core
• I vs J using Stockfish with 1 core

To my mind, being able to run only 3 engines is quite limiting considering the capabilities of modern hardware.

If you feel this makes sense, I am more than willing to jump on this and try to implement it 🚀 In fact, I learned Tcl/Tk just to be able to contribute to Scid 😁

[Bahman Movaqar]

Today, I accidentally clicked on the evaluation bar next to the board. A pop-up menu appeared with the list of engines configured. Clicking on an entry causes the engine to run.

This mysterious pop-up menu, allows on to run more than 3 engines and that's great ✅

However, even with the pop-up menu, you cannot run the same engine twice 😔

To my mind, here's what needs to be done:

1. Update docs so the users are aware of the pop up menu and that they need to enable the evaluation bar first in order to use it.
2. Create a new main menu entry "Engines" as below:

      [Engines]
 ⎡⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎤
 ❘ Configure engines…          ❘
 ❘ Start the analysis engine…  ❘
 ❘ Start an engine…            ❘
 ❘ Stop an engine           >>>❘>⎡⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎤
 ⎣⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎦ ❘ my-stockfish #1 (345.54s)     ❘
                                                                                                     ❘   my-stockfish #2 (23.00s)    ❘
                                                                                                     ❘   my-stockfish #3 (1870.95s)  ❘
                                                                                                     ❘ A foo-lc0      #1 (666.00s)   ❘
                                                                                                     ⎣⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎦

Hope I made sense.

[Uwe]

Hi Bahman,

there is a simple trick to start a engine multiple times:
Go to the engine window:
You can copy the current engine with the button in the upper right side (Tooltip: Create a copy of the current engine).
Then a new engine entry is created, which is listed in the popup of the evaluation bar.
Every entry (with a unique name) can have is own set of engine parameters.

[Bahman Movaqar]

That's a neat trick, Uwe! Already proven to be super helpful 🙌

Before marking this ticket as resolved, I'd like to know people's thoughts RE

• listing the running/open engines in a sub-menu or a modal dialog box
• being able to terminate or rename any engine from the list
• being able to run a new instance of an engine (with a given new name) via a button - essentially a convenience feature like the "copy" button

What do you think?

Finally do we feel it makes sense to add this to documentation or tips/tricks section?